Bobby Jones on AAGLive with Lucy Norris!

The Karma Network's AAGLive with Lucy Norris sat down with our very own Bobby Jones to discuss his book and share his marketing secrets! Check it out:

Lucy Norris: Joining me today to talk about this week's topic "disruption" is Bobby Jones, one of the nations top experts in marketing to millennial consumers. He is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Peace First and the co-author of a new book Good is the New Cool; Market Like you Give a Damn.

Bobby is the expert on helping brands understand how truly diverse, dynamic and powerful young people are as citizens and consumers. And today, he's going to help us do the same.

Well, thank you so much and welcome to the show.

Bobby Jones: Thank you for having me; excited to be here.

LN: Excited to have you. Now Bobby, you have been described as basically the "heartbeat of disruption" when it comes to marketing, because you're able to appeal to the target audience that every business wants to gain the attention of, and that is the Millennial and the younger counterpart, Gen Z. So let's go straight to your book.

Your book is Good is the New Cool and it deals with the transformation within the marketing ways. So what is unique about the times we're currently living in today?

BJ: Well I think there's three key shifts that are happening right now that I think are re-shaping the landscape in really profound ways. One, you spoke about earlier Gen Z, and the Millennial generation, but in large-part Gen Z is really shifting things in a profound way. Mainly because of how conscious they are. One about the issues happening in the world, their desire to create change in the world and the accountability they have for brands to actually be a part in having a positive role in changing the world for the better.

And so when you look at the way Gen Z is looking at brands, they are demanding that brands take a stand. They are demanding that brands speak out on issues that are important to them. They are looking at the ways brands create and market their products, their imagery and all of those things. And they're making sure that brands create and market their products in a way that appeals to their values as citizens, as well as their interests and tastes as consumers.

Second, if you look at this broader shift, in terms of the way technology is disrupting advertising. We have close to 3 million downloads of ad-blocking software. If people do not want advertisements, they do not have to see them. So what this is doing is that it's creating a shift in the market, where brands who want reach us as individuals and us consumer have to find ways of making it relevant in ways beyond advertising. And that's pushing the landscape to create better products, better stories, better messages, better experiences, that really make themselves remarkable enough so we're talking about them and word-of-mouth is really driving more of the awareness than advertising can.

And the third shift we're seeing, which is really the inspiration for the book is this crisis in meaningfulness we're seeing in advertising. If you go back to the early days of advertising, it was kind of this idea that advertising was this "sexy, cool" industry. But where we're at now is that the industry is really struggling to figure out it's purpose, to find it's way, it's role in society right now.

With all of the issues that are happening, people are conscious of what's happening in the world, so what role is brands and marketers going to play in it? Can we be part of the solution? Can we do more than just get people to buy stuff?